Back in May after visiting Burghley House we took a small detour to nearby Stamford before heading home. A lovely looking market town, the purpose of our trip was to visit St George’s Church where I had learnt through a great deal of family tree research during our COVID lockdowns that a relative who fought at the Battle of Waterloo was buried. We did in fact easily find his gravestone though it is so worn by age – he died in 1846 – that photographs aren’t quite as clear as seeing it in person.
Covering 12 acres that was reclaimed from scrub woodland, the sculpture garden at Burghley House contains a vast array of contemporary sculptures, some of which are considerably stranger than others! Some of my favourites are highlighted below.
Opened in 2007 the Garden of Surprises was influenced by the garden that William Cecil, the first owner of Burghley House, had created in his Hertfordshire home, Theobalds. It was common for Elizabethan gardens to have “tricks” such as mazes, statues, grottos, concealed water pipes to shoot out water etc. all of which can be found in this modern version.
For my birthday back in May we paid a visit to Burghley House and Gardens (the Garden of Surprises and the Sculpture Garden will feature in future posts). Built to impress, the house was the work of William Cecil, 1st Lord Burghley and Treasurer to Elizabeth I and is still home to his descendants today.
Built in 1911 this 120 foot tall tower houses a steel water tank that still supplies water to Lincoln today. The building was commissioned after an outbreak of typhoid between 1904-1905 which killed approximately 113 people. The architect Sir Reginald Blomfield designed the tower to resemble a medieval keep so it wouldn’t look out of place with the nearby castle and cathedral. The water in the tower is still drawn from its original source in Elkesley in Nottinghamshire.
The Guildhall and Stonebow has been the meeting place of Lincoln City Council from medieval times to the present. The term stonebow is derived from Old Norse and means a stone arch. The first gateway on the site dates from around 211AD. The Guildhall which was located elsewhere was moved to above the stonebow in 1237. The present Guildhall however dates from 1520.
Lincoln Castle is directly opposite Lincoln Cathedral and I visited both with a joint ticket of £18. Built in 1068 by William the Conqueror the castle is also the site of a Victorian prison, one of only four original copies of the Magna Carta and Lincoln’s Crown Court, which is still in use today.
Lincoln is only an hour or so away from Nottingham so I decided to take a trip there recently and bought a joint ticket to both the Cathedral and Lincoln Castle which was well worth the price of £18. An easy-ish walk from the railway station (there is a steep hill involved though buses are also available) some of the Cathedral was under scaffolding when I visited but that didn’t detract from the impressiveness of the building.
I seem to have made quite a few trips to the beach this year. The most recent excersion was to Huttoft in Lincolnshire. We used to come here a fair bit when I was a child and what I remembered most were the concrete ramps down to the beach. These have evidently been done away with and the beach is now level with the free car park, making it much easier to access. There was some mist rolling across the beach when we arrived but it soon brightened up and the sea was lovely and warm. Not too busy or overcrowded it’s still as lovely a place to visit now as when I was a child.
When we visited Gunby Hall we also went on to explore St Peter’s Church which, like so many churches on National Trust grounds, is not maintained by the Trust. In fact this church serves a congregation of only around 20 people.
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